Cosplay and Body Type – It Doesn\’t Matter!!

It seems like cosplayers these days just can never catch a break. If you\’ve been following my posts, you should remember one I wrote about the Cosplay =/= Consent movement started by the 16-Bit Sirens. They were trying to raise awareness of cosplayers who are the victim of unwanted sexual harassment because of how they are dressed up. While this movement has been gaining a lot of ground lately, which makes me very happy, we now seem to have returned to another problem that plagues the cosplay community, one that happens to be on the complete opposite side of the spectrum.

While I was just going through Tumblr, minding my own business, I came across this picture.

Let me ask you something. What exactly deems this cosplay as a failure? I see a girl who is dressing up as a character that she likes, in this case, Yuna from Final Fantasy X-2 (Gunner Dressphere.) Her cosplay as actually rather accurate and she even got the guns to boot. Seeing someone pull off a Final Fantasy character is always a pleasure to see, so what exactly is the problem here?

Here\’s the supposed problem: it\’s not the cosplay, it\’s the girl wearing it. This poor girl is being bashed because she doesn\’t have the skinny japanese idol figure that Yuna has. I\’m sorry, but that is a real dick thing to say. Saying that someone can\’t cosplay a certain character because they\’re too fat, too skinny, too tall, too short, is total nonsense. As I said in my post about cosplay =/= consent, people don\’t cosplay for your own entertainment, they\’re doing it for themselves, so you have no right at all to criticize.

I was at C2E2 a while back and I saw many different kinds of cosplay, all of them being worn by a multitude of people. 8 times out of 10, you\’re gonna see someone dressing up as a character and they themselves don\’t look anything like the actual character themselves. So what do you do about these people?

Here\’s the answer: NOTHING!!!

It really is that simple. Just let that person have fun on their own. Don\’t even think about walking up to them and trying to tell them that they are too fat for their cosplay or whatever. If body type was truly issue, then I shouldn\’t be allowed to cosplay as Link from Legend of Zelda since I don\’t have a perfect bone structure or any kind of muscle. Muscle that is severely needed to wield the Master Sword and a Hylian Shield at the same time. I tried that before one con and I was sore for a whole week!

Cosplay is always meant to be fun for everyone, no exceptions. Since when did it become so full of idiots and elitists? I try to figure out why people would say such hurtful things…..and I honestly can\’t figure it out. This tells me that there is a serious gap of logic, and that gap can only be filled with basic human decency.

All in all, people should cosplay whoever they want however they want. It doesn\’t matter if you white, black, green, blue, orange, fat, thin, square, round, IT DOESN\’T MATTER AT ALL!!! People cosplay because they love that character and they want to appreciate him or her. They don\’t do it to live out your own personal fantasy, so just leave them alone.